


this is your sword, this is your shield

by susiecarter



Category: Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, DC Extended Universe
Genre: Developing Relationship, Extra Treat, F/F, Grief/Mourning, Identity Reveal, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-15
Updated: 2017-08-15
Packaged: 2018-12-15 12:06:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11805660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/susiecarter/pseuds/susiecarter
Summary: Post-BvS, Diana and Lois start to develop a habit of protecting each other. But sometimes habits become ruts, and every now and then it's a good idea to break out of them. (Or: a whole bunch of times Diana and Lois looked out for each other, plus the time Lois ended up feeling like it might be worth it to be just a little less careful.)





	this is your sword, this is your shield

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Steals_Thyme (Liodain)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Liodain/gifts).



> ♥ ♥ ♥
> 
>  
> 
> (Side note regarding continuity: I know Diana's shield is different in Wonder Woman and BvS, but I was very definitely picturing the Wonder Woman one when I wrote this. So ... she kept it? This is an AU? She has two, and that one's her favorite? CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE. :D)

 

 

**from grief.**

Lois walks away from Clark's grave and can't stop stumbling. The ground's not that uneven—but her eyes are full of tears, her vision blurred and smearing, and she's wringing her hands too hard to concentrate on her feet. It's mindless, compulsive, pressing the ball of her hand, the heel, each of her fingers in turn, against the ring. She wishes vaguely that it were cold, that the metal would sting or burn, that there were a sharp edge somewhere to press against.

But despite the chill in the air, the overcast sky and blustery wind, the ring's warmed to match her hands. She could almost forget that she's wearing it, except for the unaccustomed weight; except for how she's pressing, pressing, pressing it into the base of her finger to remind herself.

She's not even sure which way she's going, really, except away. She finally grinds to a halt next to a tree—just a vague fuzzy shape, but she puts a hand out toward it and feels bark. She stands there and squeezes her eyes shut, feels the tears spill over. She's not sobbing. Her throat's too tight for that. Just crying, and she knows sooner or later she'll stop but right now it feels impossible. Right now it feels like this is going to last forever.

She wipes at her face with a grim abstract determination, blinks and scrubs at her eyes and blinks some more, until she can turn to the tree and see its real shape, not the squeeze-billow-squeeze distortion of looking through water. Her eyes are still stinging, relentless, but at least she'll be able to see where she's walking.

Once she starts walking. If she starts walking. The tree is comforting, steadying. She presses her fingers against it and can almost breathe again. That's kind of nice. Maybe she'll stay here for a while. An hour or two. A day. Just until doing anything else feels a little less impossible, that's all.

"Miss Lane," someone says.

Lois doesn't turn around—sniffs once, twice, scrubs helplessly just a little more at her face, and then thinks: screw it. Anybody expecting her to look her best right now can go fuck themselves.

She clears her throat and tilts her head back a little, shaking a few stray hairs free where they'd stuck to her damp cheeks, and looks over her shoulder. Into the wind, but it actually feels good against her overheated face. "Yes?" she says.

She doesn't recognize the woman who's come up to her—does she? The woman's just sliding on a pair of glasses as Lois turns, but when she's lowered her hand again Lois can't quite place her. There's something about her height, the way she stands, the clear sober look in her eyes, that's almost familiar. But Lois tries and can't turn up a name.

(Glasses. Why did it have to be glasses?)

"We haven't been introduced," the woman says gently, obviously able to guess what Lois is wondering. "I am Diana Prince, and I—" She pauses, too deliberate for Lois to call it a hesitation. "I wanted to express my sympathies," she adds at last, very quietly. Her expression was cool, composed, but now it fractures: that high smooth brow crumples, and she bites just a little at the corner of her mouth and then reaches out all at once to wrap a hand around Lois's.

It should feel intrusive. Shouldn't it? Lois thinks it should. But the woman's grip is warm, a little unsteady, and behind those glasses her eyes are wide and serious, her cheeks damp.

She's been crying too, Lois realizes.

"Did you—know Clark?" Lois manages. She's holding onto the woman's hand—Diana's hand. Probably a little too hard, but Diana doesn't shake her off.

"A little," Diana says. "Not as well as I would have liked. I am—I am so _sorry_ ," and her voice breaks, so terribly sincere Lois almost starts gushing tears all over again.

She presses a hand over her eyes to forestall it, trying to make herself breathe slowly and ignoring the way her mouth is trembling, the way her throat wants to catch—and it's not working, she thinks, but Diana Prince doesn't seem like the kind of person you ought to cry on—

Except Diana Prince apparently doesn't think so. An arm comes up around Lois's back, and her face is turned carefully, inexorably, into Diana's shoulder. "I am so sorry," she says again, softly, and Lois presses her hot scratchy eyes gratefully into what she has no doubt is a ludicrously expensive jacket. "I know what it is to be left behind; and I wouldn't have wished it on you or anyone."

"I feel stupid," Lois admits, rough and hoarse and a little squeaky. "Stupid, and selfish, and—and _mean_. I wish he hadn't done it. Isn't that terrible? I know why, I know—it was important, it was the city, and—and the whole world, I couldn't have asked him not to—"

"No," says Diana at once. "No. It is terrible that he had to, not that you wish he hadn't."

"—but I'm so _angry_ with him," Lois gasps out, and now she is sobbing, in big ugly jerks against Diana's shoulder. "I'm so selfish and so angry, I want to punch him and hug him and never ever take this ring off—"

And Diana can't have the first clue what she means by about half of that, if she can even understand it when Lois is mumbling it raggedly into the side of her arm. But she keeps holding Lois's hand, and she says, "Then don't take it off. Wear it; be angry with him; miss him. Remember, and do whatever you must."

Lois leans into her and cries harder, and Diana doesn't make her stop.

 

 

**from tedium.**

Lois takes Diana's advice to heart, and tries not to rush herself. She takes all the time off that Perry's willing to give her and then argues a little more out of him—she works anyway, because she can't stand doing nothing, but she insists on being able to push her deadlines out. Half the time she's feeling too much, crying for no reason and writing in long vicious swathes of run-ons that make no sense. And the other half of the time, it's like she's used it all up, like she's run out. She stares at her keyboard, her blinking cursor, and can't summon anything but vague exhaustion.

But she didn't land a Pulitzer by taking her own inadequacies lying down.

She fights herself for every inch of usable copy, rereads and strikes out, edits, deletes, revises. Loss casts one hell of a shadow; from under it, it's hard to remember what things used to look like in the light. But she figures out how to manage, how to approximate—and she won't have to do it forever. Sooner or later, she knows, she'll get better for real.

She's just never been all that good at waiting.

She pummels a draft into shape for Perry, and then can't stand to sit around until he replies to her email. She isn't supposed to be in as far as the Planet's concerned until next week, but it's not like they've changed the locks.

So she heads out and stalks right up to the office without even letting the receptionist call up to announce her first. Perry blinks at her, and then gestures to his monitor and says, "Two more pages, Lane."

"Fine, fine," Lois says, and settles for pacing back and forth, wearing his carpeting down just that little bit further, until he looks up again.

"Needs a little streamlining," he says, "but I like it. That line about storms passing, that was good. Nice image, not too many adjectives."

Lois shrugs this off impatiently. It's hardly her best piece—couldn't be, because pushing the deadline meant it couldn't be anything timely or hard-hitting, anything where they were worried about being scooped. But she got it where she wants it, and that counts for a lot.

"So you're back," Perry says evenly, watching her over the tops of his glasses.

Lois looks away, rubbing at the back of her neck. "I think I need to be," she says.

"Okay," Perry says, way too easily.

Lois narrows her eyes at him, and he smiles.

"No, no, wait—"

"Great timing," he says over her, "because the annual executive board meet-and-greet—schmooze-and-booze, whatever you want to call it—is this week."

"I need another five days," Lois says. "I've got a migraine. Pneumonia. Legionnaires'—"

"You're back," Perry says firmly, "and the board members love being reminded we've got a Pulitzer winner."

"Fuck," Lois says.

"I didn't hear that," Perry tells her. "Wear something nice."

 

 

*

 

 

Lois likes fancy parties, a lot of the time. People who know important things, getting drunk and talkative—what's not to love?

The thing is, when it's senior executives from the Planet, she doesn't get to keep any of it on the record. Nothing that'll embarrass the home team. Which makes it even more obvious that she's not there to be a reporter, not really; she's a medal stand in an expensive dress.

But making the board happy means it'll be easier to get the authorization to do things like travel halfway across the world to get shot at and borrow the company helicopter. So Lois sucks it up, wears something nice, and goes.

She's expecting to have to make a lot of cheerful-sounding small talk, and to have to smooth over the inevitable awkwardness when someone remembers to offer her their condolences, and to at least get some expensive champagne and decent hors-d'oeuvres out of the whole thing.

She's not expecting to see Diana Prince.

But there she is. Lois had thought she might have sort of exaggerated Diana's poise, presence—sheer height. But her memory of the graveyard apparently hasn't been deceiving her one bit.

She snags herself a champagne flute off the tray held by a passing server, and considers her options. They don't know each other, except in all the ways they do; except in all the ways you inevitably find yourself closer to anyone who's seen you sob, or throw up, or fall apart one way or another. Diana had held her carefully, patiently, and then walked her to her rental car, helped her fix her hair and smiled at her with subdued warmth. It had been an unexpected kindness on an unkind day. And now—

Now, Diana's trapped in conversation with Quentin Galloway, who's easily one of the most boring people Lois has ever met in her life. And Lois, as a rule, doesn't find people boring. But Galloway doesn't have a single story to tell that he won't tell you twice, or even three times if you make the mistake of holding still long enough.

Lois taps the champagne flute against her lip thoughtfully, takes a sip, and makes her move.

"Diana!" she cries, in a breathless delighted tone, and wedges herself neatly between Diana and Galloway—knocking aside the hand Galloway had been about to settle on Diana's arm, as if by accident. "Oh, my gosh, it's been so long—how _are_ you?" and when she leans in to buss Diana's cheek, she tilts her own champagne ever so slightly, bracing herself for the ice-cold trickle.

Shame about the dress. But it's for a good cause, Lois tells herself, and then jerks back and gasps.

She's about to blame herself, in order to complete the scene; it's a little clunky, but the best she can do on short notice. Except Diana gasps, too, hand to her mouth, and says, "Oh, how _clumsy_ of me! Your dress—"

Picking up the thread and running with it, seamless. Lois looks up and meets Diana's eyes—which are bright, amused, even as she makes all the right noises over Lois's poor ruined outfit, however can she apologize—and wants all at once to laugh.

But that's not her line. "No, no, it'll be fine," Lois says, dabbing at it a little with her hand in a completely ineffective way. Diana demurs, apologizes again, offers to help her, and then they're away, free, striding hurriedly off toward the ladies' with Galloway bobbing abandoned in their wake.

"It really is a lovely dress," Diana says, warm and a little rueful, when the door's closed behind them.

"And it really will be fine," Lois assures her, going straight for the paper towel dispenser. "Soak the worst of it up now, and the dry cleaner can do the rest."

"I'm glad to hear it," Diana says, and she sounds the same way Lois felt a minute ago, a helpless peal of laughter peeking out from under the words.

Lois grins down at the wad of four-ply she's pressing to her neckline, and then looks over her shoulder. "No glasses tonight," she says.

It's half a test, just to see what Diana will say. Without them, that sense of vague familiarity, a distant bell ringing, has gotten stronger. Lois _does_ know Diana from somewhere, and she's—

She's curious, she thinks slowly. All the time she spent hammering away doggedly at that piece for Perry, grimly forcing herself to go through the motions—but this is what it's supposed to feel like. The puzzle, the forest with only half its trees, that driving need to track down each missing piece and put it in its place. Getting a glimpse, and wanting the whole story.

This is what it feels like. She'd—she'd almost forgotten.

"No glasses," Diana agrees, mouth slanting up in a wry little smile. "Sometimes they are useful, and when they are useful I wear them. They wouldn't have been useful tonight."

Lois raises an eyebrow. Is Diana _trying_ to sound like some kind of undercover operative?

Diana meets the look calmly, and raises an eyebrow right back.

"I know you're not a board member, and I know you're not a board member's wife, and I know you're not a trustee," Lois says at last. "I'd remember if I'd seen your name on any of our contributors' lists. Just tell me you're not here as Galloway's plus-one."

"I'm not," Diana confirms easily, the smile flickering back up again and then as quickly away. "I came to—try to understand the bigger picture."

"What a marvelously cryptic non-answer," Lois murmurs, glancing down to dab a little more carefully at what's left of the spill.

"I have a choice to make," Diana says, and her tone's gone so quiet and serious that Lois can't help but look up again, meeting those steady dark eyes in the mirror. "There are risks, complications; and I want to make it well."

"And coming here was supposed to help you?" Lois says.

It comes out a little more dubiously than she meant it to—it's just that these things are so _boring_. It's hard to imagine Diana learning anything important here, anything that could really matter to whatever it is she has to do.

But Diana doesn't seem to have taken offense. "Yes," she says, without looking away from the mirror. "I think it already has."

Cryptic again. Lois narrows her eyes, lets her frustration show; and Diana's placid elegance breaks apart into a smile.

She could blind people with that thing, Lois thinks, and then belatedly remembers to glance down and check her dress again. "Well, I think that's about as good as it gets," she says, with a couple final pats. "I don't suppose you could use a round of introductions?"

"I would appreciate it very much," Diana says, and settles a hand on Lois's arm before they go back out.

 

 

**from bad company.**

Lois curses under her breath, and tries to estimate how much of a head start she has without actually turning around to look.

She hadn't expected tracking down "the Cartel" to be easy. But it's been tough enough to get anything substantial that when she got an anonymous tip, an offer to meet up coming from a third party, she'd figured it was worth a shot.

She'd been as careful as Perry could possibly ask. Which is why she's currently being followed by at least three people—if she hadn't been careful, she'd already be stuffed in the back of some unmarked van with a bag over her head.

She suspects Perry's not going to find that line of reasoning convincing, though. Especially not if any of these guys catch up with her.

She keeps walking, quick but not too tense, and deliberately checks her watch every couple minutes. She wants to look like somebody who's in a hurry because she's late for something, not because she's being followed and she knows it. If they don't know she's spotted them, they'll try to keep it that way—hoping to take her by surprise. And as long as they're still doing their best to keep out of sight—

—what? "Shitshitshit," she hisses. As if they'll just hang out back there and let her keep walking until she hits someplace safe. She's got to come up with some kind of actual _plan_ , or she's toast—

She's wound so tight that she can't help but jump at a clang from behind her. A clang, and then a thump. And then another, as if to match, from the other side of the street. Along with a low cry, abruptly cut off. Two out of three, Lois thinks with sudden hope. She squints through the dark, the nearest streetlight flickering unhelpfully. No way to be certain, from here, but it sure _sounds_ like someone just did her two-thirds of a pretty big favor.

And the third guy seems to feel the same way, because he darts out of the shadows like a hare flushed from the underbrush, eyes wild, and grabs for Lois.

She twists sharply, in case she can break his grip—but the hand that's not around her elbow is coming up toward her face with a knife in it, and if she thrashes her way into a stabbing, it's going to be even less fun than usual to explain to Perry.

"Come on out!" the guy shouts at the dark, nudging the knife up under Lois's chin. "Who the fuck are you? Come on!"

Lois closes her eyes for a second, sets aside the guy's bruising grip and that cold line against her throat and makes herself take a slow breath. And then she looks for it, and sees it: there _is_ something moving in the street. Just the barest flicker of motion, the faintest whisper of sound.

And then stillness.

"Come _on_!" the guy yells again, sounding increasingly frantic.

He's hardly even paying attention to Lois except as a hostage- _cum_ -shield, as far as she can tell. And whoever's out there, they can clearly move pretty damn fast when they try—those first two creeps had been on opposite sides of the street, but they'd been taken down within seconds of each other.

So it's a calculated risk: she shouldn't need to distract this genius for very long.

She doesn't hit him, doesn't elbow him in the gut. He's still got the knife; a fistfight's not a good idea. She just sucks in a breath and then goes limp. Legs out from under her, head lolling back, the whole nine yards.

"What the fuck," the guy screeches, and Lois can't help but flinch a little when the knife opens a sharp line of fire up toward her ear—but he's not trying to kill her, just catch her, because she's not much of a shield if she's on the ground.

And that fumble, the redirection of his attention, is all it takes. Lois can't see a goddamn thing, with her head toppled backward. But there's a rush of sound, air, light—the streetlight? Her stomach swoops, but it's belated, because she's already come to a stop. She's—on a roof, a steady arm around her that definitely isn't the third guy's. She finds her balance, ankles briefly wobbly, and then the arm's gone and there's someone standing in front of her, a stark silhouette against the Metropolis skyline.

"Whoa, okay, what the hell," Lois says breathlessly.

The head—in a hood, Lois realizes, that's why the outline's so strange—tilts, and then all at once there's a warm hand at her chin, steady fingers against the cut on the side of her throat. "You didn't have to do that," the figure says: a woman's voice, low and—concerned?

"It'll be fine," Lois says, absent, wishing her eyes would hurry up and adjust. "I thought it might help. Didn't realize you wouldn't need it."

"I appreciate it," the figure says gravely, and there; Lois still can't pick out a face, not underneath that hood, but she strains for some kind of useful detail, and at the side, the arm raised and the cloak or whatever fallen back, there's a gleam, something coiled.

Lois has seen something like that before. "It's you," she says. "You were—Doomsday. You were there."

"Yes," the woman agrees. "You remember."

Lois lets her eyes fall shut. As if she could forget. "Yeah. I remember."

"Of course," the woman says, soft and apologetic.

Not the time to dwell on that, Lois thinks, and forces her brain to start working. "And you're still here. Sticking around?"

"I am—considering it," the woman says. "It seems there may be a need."

And she's probably got the whole city in mind, the hole left by—by Superman's fall. But Lois can't help huffing out half a laugh through her nose. "I really don't get into _that_ much trouble."

"Mm." The hum is noncommittal, gently amused.

Lois glances around the rooftop. "But as long as you're here, I don't suppose you'd mind giving me a lift?"

"It would be my pleasure," the woman murmurs, and her arm settles around Lois again, steady and strong and far too easy to lean into.

 

 

**from unwanted attention (i).**

Lois keeps an eye out, after that, and as if to reward her for it, her mysterious friend is sighted more and more often in and around Metropolis. In Gotham, too, sometimes—and Lois had expected that to be a little more of an issue for the Bat, but he seems to have taken his territorial hostility down a notch or two.

She keeps track, saves every blurry photo she can find and checks social media for new rumors, the occasional shaky clip, every now and then. She has plenty of chances. But she doesn't actually figure it out until Perry calls her in to talk about it.

"The thing is," he says, oddly carefully, "in a lot of people's minds, you're the de facto authority. You blew the lid off all of this."

"With Superman, you mean," Lois says, because he's clearly trying not to.

"Right," Perry says gently, and nudges a folder across his desk toward her until she gives in and flips it open. "Wonder Woman—that's what they're calling her. If any of your sources on Superman have anything, or that—" and he waves a hand— "conspiracy guy—"

"I'm not giving anyone her name," Lois says automatically. Perry's got a few photos that aren't in her current collection, though they still aren't in particularly good focus. "It was the right call with Superman, and it's the right call here," and then she stops short, frowning down at one of the pictures.

It _is_ the right call, she knows, even if she can't give Perry the actual reasons why. She still remembers how much it had weighed on Clark, thinking about everything that could happen if anyone found him out—and then what _had_ happened, when Luthor had caught on. Using Lois to set Clark up in Nairomi, and Martha to force his hand; and whoever Wonder Woman was, she didn't deserve that.

But Lois has snagged on half a thought: looking at the picture, trying desperately to pluck something out of the vague shadows underneath that generous hood, and the words coming to her mind are familiar—high smooth brow, and what could be the faintly paler line of a straight, elegant nose; the—the height, and—

She can't see Wonder Woman's eyes, she can't. But she's suddenly sure they'd be dark, and kind, and that she knows just how they'd crinkle at the corners.

The voice, the warm low tones. She should've realized the second Wonder Woman had spoken to her.

"She's putting herself on the line for us," Lois hears herself say to Perry, still staring down at the folder. "We shouldn't make that any more dangerous for her than it has to be."

"Sure, all right," Perry says, hands raised in surrender, and when Lois glances up at him, startled, he shrugs a shoulder and sniffs. "What? People love a mystery, Lane, this isn't rocket science. Do what you have to do to get a story. We'll make it work."

"You got it," Lois says, gathering the folder to her chest, and she doesn't even pause to close Perry's door behind her on the way back to her desk.

 

 

*

 

 

She'd walked away from the board meet-and-greet with an excuse to visit the dry cleaner a little early and Diana Prince's number. She searches for it, and for Diana Prince—who does exist, she'd checked that much right after the party, but now, to her newly-opened eyes, has a remarkably light and photo-free internet footprint.

She stares at the results on her screen and then down at Perry's folder, and feels it again: that sense of coming awake, of a hell of a shadow that might just be starting to lighten. There's a story here, and she really, really wants to know what it is.

She leaves a message on Diana Prince's voicemail, and then closes the folder and stands up.

 

 

*

 

 

She asked Diana to meet her at Silas's. The diner's always so busy, she'd figured they wouldn't draw any more eyes than usual.

And she'd given Diana a time that was a couple hours away, to allow for Diana to check her messages and think it over—but she wouldn't have gotten any work done anyway, trying to wait.

So she sits in Silas's and orders a string of coffees plus a sandwich she can stare at. She likes the sandwiches here, but eating's about the furthest thing from her mind. She stares out the window and taps her feet, twists the ring around and around and around on her finger, and competes with herself to see how long she can go without checking the time.

She's climbed all the way to three and a half minutes at a stretch when Diana Prince sits down across from her in the booth and says calmly, "So sorry to make you wait! You wanted to see me, Miss Lane?"

"Lois," Lois says blankly, and then shakes herself. "You—it's you, isn't it?"

And Diana, to her credit, manages to actually extract some meaning from that completely useless question. "I knew it wouldn't take you very long," she says, with an almost sheepish little half-smile. "I could perhaps have been a little more cautious, but I had reason to believe you would understand."

Lois realizes belatedly that she's still twisting the ring around on her finger, and presses her hands flat against the table instead. "But I don't," she admits quietly. "Are you—like Clark? Or—"

"I don't come from the same place," Diana says. "But I suppose in many ways I am similar. Or I—was similar, once. And I hope to be again."

Lois narrows her eyes. "That choice you're making," she says slowly.

Diana looks away—which turns out to be a good thing, because a waiter's on the way over to refill Lois's coffee yet again and ask whether there's anything Diana wants. "A milkshake," Diana declares blithely. "Chocolate. And onion rings."

"Chocolate milkshake and onion rings, okay," the waiter says. "You want the basket, or the—"

"Is the basket bigger?" Diana says, tilting her head. "Whichever is bigger. Many onion rings."

"... Many," the waiter repeats. "You got it."

Diana beams at him, and then turns back to Lois attentively.

"Onion rings," Lois says.

"Surely you've had them before! Aren't they wonderful?"

And Lois can't help but laugh, the tension draining out of her shoulders all at once. "Yeah," she agrees, "they're pretty good. Especially here." She pauses to think about it, and then says, "The party. You were—you wanted to learn about the Planet. Right? Because of Clark."

"Yes," Diana says, immediately somber. "I believe I told you that I wish I'd known him better. I wanted to understand where he had been, what he had done—who he was."

"Right," Lois says, looking down at her hands. Something about that answer makes her uneasy, vaguely sick. On her finger, the ring glints bright.

"Lois," Diana says, and puts her hand over Lois's on the table—her palm is warm, her fingers long and strong and careful against Lois's wrist, the joint of the thumb, and Lois feels a weird hot sensation creep out of nowhere up her ears. "I believe I also told you that I know what it is to be left behind. That was true. I didn't come to you in the graveyard for Clark's sake, but for your own."

Lois looks at her carefully. Diana waits it out, open and patient, gaze steady.

Who'd leave her behind if they had a choice?

They must not have, Lois thinks distantly, whoever it was. It must not have been up to them, or they wouldn't have done it.

"Thank you," Lois says aloud.

"Of course," Diana tells her, grave. "Of course."

The waiter comes back with Diana's milkshake just then, and Lois sees him clock their hands, still overlapping on the table. He sets the milkshake down, and then draws a second straw from the pocket of his apron and puts it on Lois's side of the table with a little nod.

"Back with those onion rings in just a minute," he says, and Lois thanks him on autopilot, staring at the straw, and tells herself she doesn't know why her stomach just flipped over.

 

 

**from loneliness.**

It doesn't mean anything. People share milkshakes sometimes. Diana's pleased with the waiter for thinking of it, laughs and lifts her hand away from Lois's to peel the wrapper off Lois's straw. There's nothing strange about it, nothing wrong—it's not like Lois is just throwing herself at the next ludicrously attractive superpowered person to come along.

She fiddles with the ring, twisting it and pressing it into her finger, until the onion rings arrive. Diana doesn't have to twist her arm to get some help demolishing them.

The milkshake is good. Lois can taste the smooth rich flavor at the back of her mouth, feel the lingering cold in her teeth, the whole way back to the Planet office.

It's fine.

 

 

*

 

 

She'd settled into a routine after the funeral that she still hasn't quite broken out of, a lot of silence and stillness in between bouts of frantic typing and her own swearing at her keyboard. She didn't—talk to people very much.

She makes herself do better. She starts agreeing to go out for drinks with Cat and Ron and Jimmy after work again; she takes walks that don't always end in Memorial Park. She relearns what it's like to feel like herself.

And, somehow, she starts having lunch with Diana Prince.

It's not intentional. Or at least it doesn't feel like it is. After Silas's, she has Diana's number and Diana has hers, and they just—call each other sometimes, or text. She keeps Diana up-to-date on the Wonder Woman sightings the Planet's now officially tracking, and runs anything that might be too detailed past Diana first, before it gets into a piece. Diana lets her know about unusual criminal activity, sometimes asks for explanations of the relationships between Gotham's major crime families, or the story behind some particular Arkham inmate she'd had to help the Bat round up. And sometimes they—get lunch.

It feels good, is the thing. Before and after, she's a tangle of second guesses, guilt and nerves and uncertainty. Is it okay to feel good? To look forward to things again? Sometimes all she can think about is how selfish it is, how brutally unfair, that she can do things like get a text and smile, walk through a Metropolis evening to slide into a booth next to Diana, while Clark is lying there in the ground—

But she's still alive. She's still alive, and she's been feeling so bad about that for so long that it's a relief, a simple greedy pleasure, to be with Diana and feel good.

She should probably be more careful. She should probably rein herself in a little better. She recognizes it for exactly what it is, the lightness and the warmth, the bright soft way her hand feels after Diana's touched it, how easy it is to tilt her head back and laugh as she watches Wonder Woman—Wonder Woman!—try to come up with the right angle of attack for a towering cone of soft-serve.

But it isn't anything serious. She can still stop herself before it gets that far. And it feels good.

(She should probably have considered the pattern. Antarctica, Zod's ship, Nairomi, Doomsday. She does look before she leaps, most of the time—and then she leaps anyway.)

 

 

**from doubt.**

Wonder Woman's established something of a presence in Metropolis. Not the same way Superman had, when she's still wearing that hooded cloak more often than not, when nobody's gotten a good look at her.

It isn't quite what Lois had expected after Doomsday. She remembers Diana then, a sure solid impression: the height, the armor, the gleaming shield and blazing lasso. Not someone who'd seemed unwilling to make a splash.

She doesn't exactly mean to ask, but—well, she's a reporter. Questions are her first language.

And she's not sure exactly what she was expecting, but it wasn't for Diana to go quiet and look away.

They're on a bench at the waterfront; it's been a nice day, busy, breezy, and no one's giving them a second look. It's the easiest thing in the world for Lois to reach out and touch Diana's shoulder. "I'm sorry—you don't have to explain yourself to me—"

"No," Diana agrees, "but that doesn't mean I cannot if I should choose to." She glances up, expression soft and sorry, almost tired. Lois has never seen her look like that before. "It's just that I do not wish to hurt you."

"Depends on what you have to say," Lois tells her, and then squeezes her arm gently. "But if it does, it's okay. I can take it."

"You shouldn't have to," Diana says, very softly, and then shakes her head. "I was as you must imagine, once. And then, as I've told you, I was—left behind. A very dear price was paid, in order to do a very important thing."

Lois feels her breath catch. Yeah, she thinks distantly. Still hurts.

"It was hard," Diana says. Without fuss; a statement of fact. "I struggled. Sometimes it all felt so clear, sad but not painful. Sometimes I knew for certain that it had all happened as it had to. But sometimes I was angry, bitter. Sometimes my heart felt like stone.

"I learned to bear it. I learned not to let it make me cruel. But I didn't feel like the woman that armor should belong to, and I didn't wear it again for a long time."

"And then Doomsday happened," Lois fills in, when Diana doesn't continue.

"And then Doomsday happened," Diana agrees, very quiet. "I thought I was ready. I thought I was wise, I thought I was prepared. I thought surely it would not have to happen that way, if we stood together. If we were strong enough. But I was wrong," and that steady low voice suddenly cracks, fault line exposed. "I was—I didn't want to think the cost would always be so great. Perhaps that was foolish. You can either do nothing or you can do something," she adds, with the rhythm of a recitation, "and I have tried nothing; I have tried something; I—" She shakes her head again, more slowly. "I don't know what else to try."

Lois draws a slow breath, and turns it all over carefully. "That choice you were making."

"'Not making' may be more accurate," Diana murmurs, rueful, after a moment.

"I think maybe you already made it," Lois says slowly. "You didn't have to help Clark. Did you? There must have been a moment when you could have walked away, and you didn't. You told yourself you were going to take your time and think it through, that you weren't going to be Wonder Woman again unless you were sure. And then you put that cloak thing on and came and stopped that guy from cutting my throat. You're looking, but you—"

She stops and swallows, a distant warning bell clanging somewhere. Too late, she thinks dimly.

"You already leaped," she says, soft.

The hand she has on Diana's shoulder feels suddenly like exposure, clumsy and obvious; her face goes hot, her mouth dry. Diana looks back at her and is abruptly unreadable. She's lifted a hand toward Lois's, and the brush of her fingertips against Lois's wrist feels overpowering.

"Yes," Diana says. "Perhaps I have."

 

 

**from foes in a time of weakness.**

"You know," Lois says, "when you invited me to come with you while you visited your mother, this is really not what I was picturing."

"Nor I," Diana murmurs into the side of her neck; and then Lois stumbles a little and Diana bites off a gasp.

Lois stops to tuck Diana's arm a little more securely around her shoulders, and risks a glance down at the open wound on Diana's side. Diana assured her it would heal quickly, but Lois is sort of concerned that it's there at all—and it looks horrific, purple-red and gaping except for all the places where it's gone black, the dark branching creep of blood poisoning spreading much too quickly, too clearly, from its edges.

Blood poisoning, or maybe whatever venom those bizarre giant space-scorpion things have in their tails. Lois really, really hopes any difference between the two will be purely academic in the end.

And Diana's dedicatedly sprinting her way through secondary symptoms as fast as she can, but it doesn't seem like it's going to be quite fast enough. Lois looks back over her shoulder and carefully hitches Diana a little closer. She hadn't seemed all that bad, at first. And then she'd started stumbling, slurring her words, sweating, her skin going red and hot to the touch. She still seems to have an okay grip on her sword and shield, but Lois is carrying more of her weight than not.

Themyscira, Lois thinks, is unnecessarily rocky.

Diana's mumbling something into the skin of Lois's throat. Lois swallows and says a little too loudly, "Diana—Diana, I can't hear you."

"You must take the sword," Diana repeats, bleary. "I cannot lift it. You must—"

"Whoa, hey," Lois says, because she wasn't entirely prepared to juggle a limp goddess and a magic sword, but the sword's sliding out of Diana's hand.

She catches it by the hilt before the point can go through her foot. It's not nearly as heavy as she was expecting—not nearly as heavy as it should be, either, considering the length of it, the enormous gleaming stones set into the guard. Magic, Lois reminds herself.

"You know how to wield it."

As if that matters, Lois thinks, when Diana can't even hold the damn thing. "Sure," Lois says. "Works just like a pen: you aim the pointy end at other people and keep going until you hit something important."

"Yes," Diana says, fierce and approving and sort of vaguely drunk; and then her head lolls sideways against Lois's shoulder. "And my shield," Diana adds, apparently to the sky.

Lois risks another look back, and it's hard to be sure with all the greenery, but she's not catching the glint off any space-scorpions' weird iridescent carapaces. "Look, this can't possibly be helping. Let's just set you down for a minute so you can rest—"

"My shield," Diana repeats, insistent.

"Yeah, all right," Lois says, and eases Diana carefully down onto a rock, trying not to touch her anywhere that's oozing or bleeding or turning unpleasant colors.

The rock is really more of a small outcropping, which means Diana can lean back against it and not worry about trying to hold her own head up anymore. Lois shifts her grip on the sword so she's actually brandishing it instead of just clutching it awkwardly, and then leans down to touch Diana's cheek, her shoulder—and maybe she is cooling off a little. Is the worst patch of black on her side getting smaller? Or does Lois just hope it is?

"My shield," Diana says again, reaching for Lois's free hand. And she's not content to just let Lois set it down, because that would be much too easy. She guides Lois's forearm through the grips instead, wrapping Lois's fingers around the outer one with wavering but concentrated intensity. "Nothing will touch you now—"

"I'm fine!" Lois says. "You're the one who got space-scorpioned," but it comes out wobbly, a little breathless, instead of stern: Diana's looking at her so—so _keenly_ , almost searchingly, the hand at her wrist unsteady but insistent, like Lois having her shield is somehow more important to her than the part where her whole side is a massive wound that might kill her.

And then there's a noise in the brush somewhere, and Lois whirls around and hefts the shield up and hopes really hard that it's an Amazon instead of a space-scorpion.

 

 

*

 

 

It isn't—but the noise that comes right after it is, which is good. The magic sword doesn't just carry its own weight, but can actually sort of guide itself. So Lois waits until the Amazons have the lion's share of the space-scorpion's attention and then hacks at it a little, and manages to knock one of its legs off in a flood of weird multicolored ichor.

Or the sword does, anyway. It counts.

Diana does heal. By the time the Amazons have carried her back to the city, she's glowing a little, red and gold, and the dark veiny pattern has receded.

"She'll be fine," Menalippe says gently, when they've settled Diana in the healing house; and Lois blinks and looks at her and realizes belatedly that the shield's still on her arm, the sword still in her hand.

Plus there's ichor everywhere.

"Is there something I can use to—clean these off?" Not that she's especially worried that they're going to rust, but—

But they're Diana's. It seems important to take good care of them.

"Of course," Menalippe says.

There are, in fact, multiple things she can use: a pool of gleaming water that looks a little too blue to be real, one cloth to work the last of the sticky ichor out of all the curves and divots of the sword's hilt, the shield's surface, and then another to dry them, a third—some kind of fur?—to polish them clean.

It should be tedious, but it's mostly just relaxing. Lois takes deep slow breaths and works away at it, and only realizes her arms were shaking before when they stop.

"It's beautiful, isn't it?"

"Hm?"

"The shield," Menalippe clarifies.

Lois glances over at her—she's working on another shield herself, and it looks solid, practical, but not especially lovely. Not like Diana's: the curves and angles, the neatly-layered rays radiating around the center. "Yes, it is," Lois says, running a careful hand across it, feeling the cool smooth surface start to warm beneath her fingertips.

"She wouldn't ask just anyone to bear it," Menalippe says.

Lois stares down at it and feels her stupid heart start to pound. "She wouldn't," she echoes, just to taste the shape of the words in her mouth, just to feel the greedy self-satisfied glow of them.

Menalippe reaches out and touches Lois's elbow, and waits for Lois to look at her. "It means something to us," she says. "To give someone else the shield that is yours, to place all that has ever defended you in their hands, it is—it means something."

Lois thinks of the look in Diana's eyes, as she'd guided the shield onto Lois's arm. _Nothing will touch you now._

She closes her eyes. "She's going to be all right."

"Yes," Menalippe says quietly, "she is." And then, brisk but not unkind, "Here, come on, you've missed a spot."

Lois laughs a little and wipes at the corners of her eyes, and then makes a show of leaning down to inspect the shield's shining face. "I did not! Where?"

 

 

**from unwanted attention (ii).**

Lois cranes one way and then the other. Diana isn't exactly hard to spot, with the height and the pose and her whole—self. Or at least Lois has never had much trouble picking her out of a crowd.

But if she's here, she's somewhere other than the ballroom. And she is here, she must be; she's the one who invited Lois in the first place.

Lois settles back on her heels and sighs a little. The dancing is only half of tonight's event. The other half is a silent auction, with Diana's fingerprints all over it. It's entirely possible that someone's pulled her aside somewhere to ask after authentication paperwork, or to congratulate her on a job well done. Lois just has to be patient, and wait.

(Dear god, does she hate waiting.)

She turns at the touch to her elbow with a smile, sure that it must be Diana—

"Oh, I—I'm sorry, do we know each other?"

"Not yet," the man admits. "But I'd like that to change. Miss—?"

"Lane," Lois says, a few degrees cooler but not quite impolite. "I'm actually waiting for someone, I'm afraid, but it was a pleasure—"

"I'm only looking for a minute of your time," and that's never good phrasing; that's someone angling to talk business, and whether it's the Planet kind of business or the "Cartel" kind of business, the fact that he didn't choose to lead off with it from the start isn't promising.

But before Lois can even come up with a new deflection, a hand slides between the man's fingers and her arm, smoothly breaking his grip. And then Diana smiles and says, "I hope you don't mind if I cut in."

The music's already started, halfway through a song, and they're several steps away from the dance floor—it doesn't give Diana pause. Half a dozen strides and she whirls Lois smoothly around and into position, and then, raising an eyebrow, settles a hand in the small of Lois's back.

"You don't, do you?"

"What?" Lois says, mind blank.

"Mind," Diana clarifies, mild but amused, one side of her mouth slanting up.

As if it would be even remotely believable to say yes. "Of course not," Lois says with a helpless laugh, and then remembers to actually put her own hand on Diana's shoulder instead of just thinking about it.

Doing it brings them closer, completes a circuit; suddenly Lois's head is full of nothing but Diana's bare shoulders, the dip of collarbone at the base of her throat, the steady warmth of her palm against Lois's back. She's in striking dark blue, cobalt, with gold at her ears and wrists—sunlight on the sea off Themyscira, Lois thinks, chest suddenly tight.

"You look wonderful," she blurts.

Diana looks at her and smiles, slow and brilliant. "Thank you," she says quietly. "I could say the same, but it seems wrong to give your own compliment back to you. You'll have to give me a little time to come up with a better one."

They really aren't spinning enough to justify being this dizzy, Lois thinks distantly. Not that it matters: Diana has her. She won't fall.

"Steve taught you to dance, right?"

"Yes, that is how I learned to dance like this. Etta, too," Diana amends. "She had to explain how you—lead? Follow? It all seemed very complicated to me at the time. This," and she tilts her head to indicate the music, the dance floor, the other couples revolving around them, "is not how Amazons dance."

"Oh? How _do_ Amazons dance?" Lois says.

Diana's eyes turn somehow darker. Lois is reasonably sure there's still air in the room, but however much there is, it doesn't feel like enough. "A little differently," she murmurs, and suddenly Lois isn't sure they're talking about dancing anymore.

She looks so—so _lovely_ like this, which sounds weird and old-fashioned but is the only word Lois can come up with that fits. She's flushed with dancing, and not just an elegant dusting but bright, all through the apples of her cheeks; the corners of her eyes have crinkled up, a smile sweetening the generous curve of her mouth, dark curls tumbling loose along the line of her shoulders. Not like a queen, or a statue, or any of a dozen other comparisons that should be perfectly apt— _queen_ sounds so dignified and faraway, _statue_ so cold, and Diana is brilliant and warm and right here under Lois's hands, laughing as she turns them across the floor fast enough to make the skirts of their dresses swirl wide.

"Lois," she says when they slow again, "Lois—" and something in her tone makes Lois swallow hard. And then she slows them even more, shifts to reach for the hand Lois has at her shoulder, and—

And rubs a fingertip lightly, gently, along the curve of the ring that's still on Lois's finger.

Wistfulness, Lois thinks. That's what it was, that hidden thing in Diana's voice.

"Lois," Diana murmurs, once more, very low; and then the music winds down, the song at an end, and she squeezes Lois's hands and steps away. "A pleasure, as always," she says, lowering her eyes, and Lois stares at their fingers, wrapped around each other, and tries to remember how to breathe.

 

 

**from uncertainty.**

Lois takes the ring off.

She stares at it, lying there, a cool bright circle against her desk.

She puts it back on, thumbs at it gently. Does it not fit as well as it used to?

No, that's silly. Her fingers are the same size, and so is the ring. She just—

She just wants a reason to take it off.

(Doesn't she have one already?)

She takes it off.

She doesn't do this. Dither, or—or second-guess herself. Why is this so hard? There's all kinds of reasons to think this is a terrible idea, but none of them feel like the sort of thing that should stop her. None of them feel like enough to counterbalance the way her eyes always seem to find Diana; the way she shivers to herself when she thinks about Diana's hands, her shoulders; the way Diana smiles, the way her voice sounds, when she says Lois's name.

Lois curses and puts her head down against her desk, closing her eyes and gritting her teeth. What's wrong with her? Why is she—

Why is she so afraid?

She keeps her eyes shut and feels for the ring, tips it into her palm and rubs her thumb along the curve. She'd been afraid on Themyscira, too. Natural reaction to giant killer space-scorpions falling out of a rift in the sky, except—except she'd still been afraid after it was all over, in the healing house. Menalippe had known it. The scorpion's tail had dug such a terrible wound in Diana's side; but it wasn't like Lois was squeamish. She'd gotten one at least half that bad herself from the little security drone thing in Antarctica. It was just that seeing Diana lying against the rock like that, with a hole in her chest—

In her side. It had been in her side. Lois sets the ring down very carefully and then presses her hand against the desk until it stops shaking.

It's better this way, she tells herself. Diana wouldn't want someone ambivalent or halfhearted anyway. Diana wouldn't want someone who isn't brave.

 

 

**(from regret.)**

Except for all that she can't quite make herself take the ring off, it's—she can't quite make herself leave it on, either. Doing that feels like lying, like hiding something. And she knows what Diana's lasso can do; she knows how Diana feels about the truth. Pretty much the same way Lois herself does.

So the next time they go out, it's not on her hand anymore.

They get ice cream. Diana loves ice cream, and Lois put together a list of every place in Metropolis that has ice cream on the menu. They're working their way through it, crossing them off a flavor at a time. (Diana refuses to consider the ice cream truly _experienced_ until she's tried all the options.)

Today is Mimi's, a tiny little place they're going to have to come back to at least six times. Diana orders one scoop each of five different flavors, and Lois laughs at the delighted way she beams at her hazelnut-butterscotch-espresso-who-knows-what-else monstrosity and gets cookies and cream for herself. When they've paid, they go around a corner into an alley and double-check their grips on their ice creams. And then Lois braces herself for Diana's arm around her waist, a moment's endless and unbearable closeness, and they're on the roof.

It would be stupid to linger. She's already decided it's better if she doesn't—if she—it would be stupid.

She clears her throat and steps away, and looks out at the view instead of Diana's face, because that's so much safer. "Nice sunset."

"Beautiful," Diana agrees, and then, "Oh—careful—"

Mimi's specialized in towers of scoops; they gave out spoons even with cones. Lois hadn't wanted to lose her on the way up, and had tucked it into her waistband instead of into the ice cream—and in going for it, hasn't paid enough attention to how she's holding her ice cream.

She realizes it's tilting dangerously at the same moment that she registers Diana's hand closing around hers. "My hero," she says with a laugh, steadying the cone—but Diana doesn't let go.

Lois looks up.

"Is it lost?" Diana says, low and urgent. "Did someone take it from you? Were you—"

Oh. The ice cream—she's got it in her left hand. "No, no, I," Lois starts, and then gives up and catches the little silver chain around her neck with the handle of the spoon, pulls until the ring clinks up and out from under her shirt. "I wanted to keep it with me, but—" She looks away, feeling uncomfortably exposed. But that sentence only ends one way; she can't not tell Diana the truth. "It didn't belong on my hand anymore."

"It didn't?" Diana says.

Her hand is still wrapped around Lois's.

"No," Lois hears herself say. "You gave me good advice. I wore it for as long as I needed to. But now—"

"Now?" Diana repeats, very softly, when Lois trails off. "Lois, are you—"

Lois kisses her.

She doesn't mean to. It's just that she can't help but look at Diana, right then, and Diana is so _close_ , so earnest and concerned, bright eyes and generous mouth and that hand that still hasn't moved, fingertips warm against the back of Lois's hand around the goddamn ice cream.

She kisses Diana on her tiptoes, surges up and hooks an arm around Diana's neck for balance and licks in as deep as Diana will let her—which, to her dim surprise, is pretty deep.

And then she realizes the plastic spoon was still in her hand, and she's shoved the handle into Diana's hair.

"Oh, god," she says, breathless, breaking away. "Oh, god, sorry—not about that, I mean, just for the—and wait, yes. Yes, I'm sure. That's what you were going to ask, right? Yeah. Yes. I'm sure."

And Diana looks down at her and beams, brilliant, like Lois's helpless rambling is the best thing she's ever heard. "Wonderful," she says, sounding both perfectly sincere and endlessly amused. "That's wonderful."

"I'm glad you think so," Lois manages. "At the risk of sounding unromantic—our ice cream's melting."

Diana glances over—at her right hand, holding her own ice cream, and then at her left, still around Lois's—as if to check. "Yes," she says, "I think it is," and then she leans down without hesitation to catch Lois's mouth again.

 

 


End file.
